[Progress.151] Big hail storm last Saturday, leaf guard installed

Saturday (21/2) around 11:30 am, we went to one of the Chinese restaurants in Eastwood (a suburb next to Epping) for lunch. It was pouring quite heavily, and half way through our meal all the lights in the the restaurant went off. Luckily the emergency light turned on immediately and we were still able to quickly finish the lunch. Without the air con it was extremely hot.

When we walked out the restaurant, we found that all the shops on the street lost power. It certainly caused some impact to all the businesses that day! Then the hail storm started, it didn't last a long time but it's quite amazing watching all the little ice blocks falling with the rain.

We quickly rush home after the storm and found half of our sun room flooded with water. Didn't have time to take any photo as we were busy cleaning up.

The water slowly disappeared after about 10 - 15 min. This is what our sun room looks like after the clean up, flooring tiles still quite wet.

We have 3 drain holes at the back, I quickly check all of them but couldn't find any sign of blockage. I think it's probably because there's just too much water to be handled.

Also found that there's so much water that it formed a small valley in the garden at the front as below.

Talking about the front garden, I took a photo from different angle as below. And yes, you can see the new house by Eden Brae right across the road.

Compare to the following one last July, these plants have certainly grown pretty well! Urh... Please ignore the ugly fence, which neighbour refused to share the cost for replacement... Our plants have done an excellent job in blocking the view...

We just finished the installation of leaf guard over all the gutters, which should have also helped with the water drainage. A few photos below, it wasn't very clear though.

Tell me how you feel about the quality of the work, and like to see if you can pick up any problem from these 2 photos. We are still waiting for ABC Seamless to fix a few things, which I will try to cover the details in future post.

[PropertyInfo.035] Is gutter leaking problem covered by insurance?

We have a guy from ABC Seamless, one of the gutter/leaf guard company to give us a quote for a leaf guard for our gutters the other day.

During his presentation, I noticed in his folder there were some information about 2 articles (see below) from Sydney Morning Herald about some major problems with the "high-front gutters" design.

The 2 articles with quite shocking information are as below:

Gremlin behind the walls


and

Government failed to tell builders of gutter rule: Opposition


As mentioned in the articles:

"People think it's just a matter of a simple roof leak, which they can then claim through their insurance,"

"But these homes will not be repaired by insurance companies if the original work was non-compliant. This guttering is not only a breach of legislation but an act of unwitting deceit, potentially causing health and financial stress to consumers. Then they pursue us, and we face litigation for non-compliance."

"Opposition's spokeswoman on fair trading, Catherine Cusack, called the widespread installation of non-compliant guttering systems 'one of the greatest failures in Australian consumer protection history'"

From the articles, looks like there were a few things not been followed during gutter installation, such as: (1) leaving a gap between the gutter and the wall, (2) there should be overflowing slots (holes) on the gutter, but some manufacturers leave it as optional.

Also, the design of "high-front gutters" is flawed as when there's more water than it could handle, the water will naturally flows toward the back - into the house as the back of the gutter is much lower than the front.

One other option of course, would be to have a gutter that has a higher back. And that's where ABC Seamless is pushing their special "high-back gutter" product and they claim to be the only one in the industry that's supplying this product - see the "Ogee" one as highlighted below, the page of all available gutter profiles is here.


There must be other technical complications or cost/installation issues involved, otherwise I don't understand why they also sell the "flawed" high front gutters?

Regardless of all these, yes, we all know that we have to clean our gutters regularly and yes, the leaf guard would help to prevent blockage. But my main concern is, is it true that insurance company won't be covering the cost if there's any problem? What options do we have?

Hope someone with experience/knowledge in this area can help to clarify, and any comments/suggestions welcomed!

[Others.021] Try these beautiful Rain Chains

Thanks to this post from MARTIN & AAM's blog, this is the first time I ever seen this beautiful "Rain Chains".

It works the same way like the downpipes that connects to your gutters. But it's definitely looks much better than the colourbond or ugly PVC ones.

This one is from www.rainchain.com.

The rest are from www.rainchains.com. Yes, there's an extra "s" at the end, and it's a completely different company...





Found this site selling a 2.7M chain for AU$475, not cheap and it doesn't look as good as the ones I mentioned above.

Lots of people spend lots of money for water features, may be Rain Chains are a easier/simpler/cheaper alternative??!!

Any way, one extra thing for you to consider if you want your house to look special when compared to others in your neighbourhood!

[Progress.068] First floor gutters completed

After 2 weeks of continuous rain, we finally have some beautiful weather this week. We noticed some materials for gutters been delivered on Tuesday morning. When we drove past on Wednesday afternoon around 2pm, the gutters for first floor were all finished and there's another few trades person working on the safety fence for roof. As shown below, this was late yesterday afternoon where all the roof fences were also finished. Quite amaze how much they can achieve in one day.

This one taken from the back.

A closer look showing how the roof truss/frames were connected to the gutters.


According to our supervisor, they will finish the roof tiles for 1st floor, wash the bricks, and then lower the scaffoldings. Then repeat the same process for ground floor roof (for garage at the front, kitchen and alfresco at the back). Looks like we can have all the roofing finished before Christmas, and no more worries about the rain!